December 12, 2015 – EmTech is the annual global Emerging Technologies conference hosted by MIT Technology Review, the oldest and arguably most respected technology publication. This event has grown into a global community which runs in the US, Spain, China, India, Mexico, Colombia and Singapore, and is widely considered as one of the most important conferences on emerging technologies that matter.

This year, EmTech Asia will be taking place from 26 to 27 January 2016, and will feature world-class speakers from organizations such as Google, Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Lab, Singpost, Github, Y Combinator and Flying Mollusk.

EmTech will continue to collaborate with Eden Strategy Institute to identify 10 of the most outstanding and aspiring innovators under the age of 35 in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, whose superb technical work promises to change the world. The prestigious Innovators Under 35 competition has previously honored some of the world’s most brilliant minds such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, JB Straubel of Tesla, Silicon Valley veteran investor Marc Andreessen, and Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov.

EmTech Asia is where technology, business, and culture converge. It is a community, a network, and a meeting place for business leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and change makers who are passionate about addressing major global issues and turning ideas into solutions.

EmTech Asia is the showcase for emerging technologies with the greatest potential to change our lives and an access point to the most innovative people and companies in the world. It is an opportunity to glimpse the future and understand the technologies that will change the face of business and drive the new global economy.

Bookmark this page as Eden will be releasing a series of infographics around EmTech’s key themes in the weeks leading up to the event!

]]>Disruptions in Urbanization: The Role of Roads in a Smart Cityhttps://www.edenstrategyinstitute.com/smart-roads/
Thu, 26 Nov 2015 08:25:27 +0000https://www.edenstrategyinstitute.com/?p=3433

Roads might soon do much more than physically connect people and goods; they might disrupt urban planning as we know it by becoming the main arteries powering the urban city of the future.

For thousands of years, roads have been a centerpiece of urbanization, making it possible for people, markets, and merchandise to be connected over vast distances. Over time, technology has evolved to make roads stronger, more efficient, and safer, but may soon connect us in new ways.

Roads to produce distributed power. Last October, France’s major civil engineering and road construction firm Colas announced the launch of its solar road technology, Wattway. Wattway is the world’s first ever photovoltaic road surface which uses new road-building materials to produce energy to contribute to a city’s power generation. According to the firm, one kilometer of Wattway-paved road can provide the electricity to power public lighting in a city of 5,000 inhabitants; equipping just one quarter of France’s public roads would make the country energy self-sufficient.

Harvesting sustainable power wirelessly. Going further, solar roads can also power electric vehicles via wireless induction charging, as demonstrated by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) with its prototype of the Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV). The UK government has also just announced its intention to invest £ 500 million to implement induction charging roads with Highways England, the government organization responsible for operating England’s motorways. Induction charging might solve our dependency on fossil fuel for ground transportation, and be the first step towards carbon-free transportation and carbon-free urban development.

Dynamic roads as lean infrastructure. Idaho-based start-up Solar Roadways is working on smart solar road materials which not only produce and channel solar energy to wherever it is needed, but can also melt snow, sense pressure to identify unexpected obstacles, display information using LED-integrated technology, dynamically adjust traffic lanes based on live data, and transfer data though the Internet. Once commercialized, this technology could replace road sign painting, obstacle signaling, snow removal systems, and even Internet transmission networks.

These innovations enable us to make the roads safer, and will one day replace energy production and distribution, Internet transmission networks, and road signs. We have been using roads for millennia, but are only starting to scratch the surface of in understanding how they can not only connect us, but also power tomorrow’s cities and urban landscape.

April 25, 2015 – The University of Chicago Booth School of Business commemorated the milestone of the 15 years since it opened its first location in Asia, by organizing a Social Enterprise Forum as part of its Celebration of Influence weekend.

The event’s first panel on Building the Social Enterprise started with Ms. Shiao-Yin Kuik, Co-Founder and Director of The Thought Collective, characterizing social enterprises as organizations that often take multidisciplinary approaches to fixing the root causes of social problems, and advocated that all good businesses should be social businesses.

Mr. Allan Lim, Co-Founder of Alpha Biofuels and The Living! Project discussed how sometimes the harsher contexts of mission-driven firms help to drive innovation and competitive advantage.

Ms. Pamela Chng, Founder of Bettr Barista Coffee Academy, illustrated this by describing how her social business helps marginalized women and youth-at-risk not only by training them in barista skills, but by supporting their physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

Ms. Anix Lynch, Vice-President of Strategy at DTGO, Chearavanont Family Office, asserted that multinational corporations and enlightened corporate leaders such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson are increasingly looking towards social enterprises as investment targets, because they are at the forefront of untapped market opportunities.

“Companies are investing in social enterprises for both financial returns and strategic value. By harnessing economic models to support socially innovative products that successfully serve a need, companies sustain wins for themselves, the underprivileged and their communities, the government, the non-profit sector, academia, and the planet,” she said.

Mr. Vishnu Swaminathan, Leader – South Asia for Ashoka Innovators for the Public, elaborated on the different ways that social enterprises create impact, from offering direct services, to designing ways where social solutions could be replicated, creating systemic change such as with open source solutions, and finally to achieve systemic change where solutions become the norm of society.

Finally, Ms. Chloe Huang, Head of Strategy and Research at the new Social Enterprise Resource Centre, highlighted how social enterprises have the potential to create solutions that may be even more scalable than what governments could offer, and outlined the wide range of support available to aspiring social entrepreneurs. These include knowledge resources, events, corporate mentoring, training, incubation, and funding.

In closing the session, Eden Partner Mr. Calvin Chu summarized how the discussion offered many examples demonstrating how social innovation resolves the perceived contradictions between social and business objectives.

“Social enterprises offer fresh approaches and partnerships to fulfill unmet needs more innovatively and holistically than existing solutions, and offer strong strategic and financial advantage to forward-looking leaders to contribute meaningfully to the civilizational challenges of our age,” he said.

About Eden Strategy Institute

Eden Strategy Institute is Asia’s leader in Social Innovation. Its distinctive approach to sustainable advantage helps leading global corporations, governments, and non-profit organizations design new growth platforms, operations, products, and services, and align them with market forces and developmental opportunities. Eden has helped bring disruptive innovations that generate financial value from creating social impact, and through its Accelerator supports social enterprises such as in the areas of healthcare, wellness, educational innovation, emerging middle class technologies, and energy efficiency.

March 20, 2015 – As the world celebrates the International Day of Happiness today, Eden Strategy Institute is pleased to announce the launch of HappyDoWhat (www.happydowhat.com), a mobile application that allows users to geographically tag and receive real-time notifications of happy places and events wherever they are.

It is widely documented that impression management on social media can make people feel sadder. Based on scientifically-proven happiness drivers, HappyDoWhat is an alternative platform to help users anonymously reflect, record, and relive their happy moments.

It redefines the notion of happiness to focus on the small things in life, and cultivates lasting habits of happiness such as thinking positively, trying new experiences, appreciating special moments, helping others, and expressing gratitude.

“HappyDoWhat is a tool that reminds people to treasure the happy moments in life, helps them relive their best memories, understand themselves better, and authentically share happiness and gratitude with others,” said Mr. Chu Yee Ming, Partner at Eden Strategy Institute.

“We embarked on this project as we have always been interested in raising the happiness levels of those around us, and quite frankly are ourselves also curious to explore the happiest hotspots around us and even find out who is the happiest person in the world,” he added.

How does the app work?

Jazz music makes User A happy. She walks into an old music store one day, and discovers some great jazz music in the store. She takes a photo of the place and geographically tags it in HappyDoWhat.

User B, also a jazz music lover, searches for a music store near him. When he walks near the music store, HappyDoWhat sends a notification of User A’s post to him. User B looks at it and decides to check it out. He finds a vintage collection and is really delighted! He sends his word of gratitude to User A through HappyDoWhat. User A receives it, and is pleased that she has made User B’s day.

Happiness Geo-tagging. Posts of happy moments can be geographically tagged with their location and saved in our global database of ‘Happiness Hotspots’, or kept private in their personal journals.

Customizable Happy notification settings. Users can select and customize the categories and frequency of notifications for happiness alerts that they wish to receive.

Real-time geo-located notifications. Users would be able to spontaneously delighted by the real-time notification of the Happy Trails nearby that others have left near them.

Pilot users have reported positive results from trying out the app:

“It is always a delight to receive HappyDoWhat’s surprising notifications of happy places near me. I find that just paying special attention during these new activities helps me to savour the moments and make life better.”

December 10, 2014 – Against the backdrop of recent global developments, more companies are beginning to consider how to strategically integrate social impact with their core business to differentiate themselves to customers, employers, investors, suppliers, and their communities. Eden co-hosted the session “From Shareholder Value to Shared Value” with the CFA Society Singapore and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, to explore how Social Innovation can be the most effective pathway to shared value.

By addressing how conventional ways companies have the potential for much greater social impact, Eden explored real case studies of how shared value companies have successfully achieved sustainable competitive advantage against traditional companies via social innovation. We presented evidence from the S&P 500, to demonstrate tangible financial returns on Social Innovation. With a practical framework and toolkit, this session aimed to gauge interest and gather perspectives of financial analysts in how they too might consider the real shared value of companies and in so doing influence the way CEOs drive value in their organizations.

Eden firstly presented the case for shared value with quantitative analysis of various financial indicators among socially-innovative companies on the S&P 500. We discovered that over time, consumer product companies, for instance, attain higher average profits and return on equity than companies who only focus on ‘classical’ Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or traditional companies that do not engage explicitly in socially responsible initiatives. Interestingly, the compounded annual growth rate of the market capitalization of Socially Innovative companies was found to be lower than both CSR-focused and traditional companies, which may indicate that the stock market fails to capture the real value created by socially innovative initiatives that would subsequently lead to greater returns.

We presented a framework of Social Innovation models that drive value in five areas: (i) Securing dependable sources of supply; (ii) Developing new markets; (iii) Innovating new products; (iv) Enhancing market access; and (v) Building brand. In each of these areas, Eden presented an actual client case and economic model where companies have earned higher profits by lowering costs, commanding a premium, or selling in greater volumes over time. We supplemented the case studies with toolkits, for participants to operationalize these frameworks in their own organizations.
Participants then reflected on Eden’s approach and methodology evidencing the returns on Social Innovation, and brainstormed on how financial analysts can contribute to a community support the Social Innovation movement. This event marked a start to our journey advocating for the financial value of Social Innovation and its relevance to the capital markets.

Eden is looking for co-creators to contribute to its journey researching evidence-based Social Innovation Business Models. Please contact us at innovate@edenstrategyinstitute.com to discuss how you can get involved in this community.

December 8, 2014 – NUS Enterprise’s Social Venture Lab @ NUS organized a series of events with the Family Business Network Asia as part of its efforts to equip businesses with tools to be a force of good. Its first forum of the series titled “Business, a Force for Good: Forum on Conscious Capitalism“ saw attendees that included social enterprise practitioners, non-profit organizations, impact investors, enablers, students, as well as corporations looking for ways to grow their social impact.

The event started with a keynote presentation by Bart Houlahan, the co-founder of B lab. B lab leads a movement of formally recognizing sustainable and socially-responsible organizations via its B Corporation certification and the Benefit Corporation legal form. Bart also described B Analytics, a data platform to articulate social value to investors. Certified B Corporation is present in 33 countries, and has certified more than 1,000 corporations in more than 80 industries. He mentioned that legal approaches are important for investors, companies, and municipalities to identify and assess the impact of socially responsible portfolio companies, suppliers, and local partners.

The next speaker Law Gin Kye from Family Business Network Asia shared his personal journey of identifying a cause in addressing needs of poor communities in Malaysia, and saw an opportunity in linking a financial services company to serve the unmet needs of communities not previously reached as customers. This public-private partnership initiative gained traction amongst locals and beneficiaries, and received support from the local government.

The speakers discussed various key success factors and challenges when encouraging businesses to commit to creating social impact in their organizations. Reinforcing Bart’s point about encouraging companies to become Certified B Corporations, Calvin stressed the importance of measuring the financial impact of socially responsibility.

“Companies can articulate the incremental value attributed to social innovation by identifying key performance and financial indicators in five key domains: (i) Securing dependable sources of supply; (ii) Innovating inclusive products; (iii) Developing new markets; (iv) Enhancing distribution channels; and (v) Building their brands,” he said.

The speakers concluded that to ‘move the needle’ in encouraging companies to become a force for good, essential ingredients include more cross-sector collaborations, clearer legal standards and recognition systems, widespread recognition for industry champions, as well as mutually-beneficial international and local public-private partnerships.

About Eden Strategy Institute
Eden Strategy Institute is Asia’s leader in social innovation consulting. Eden’s distinctive approach to sustainable advantage helps multinational organizations design new growth platforms, operations, products, and services, by aligning them with market forces and developmental opportunities. Its non-profit research arm provides a fact base of how industries create enduring profits by addressing pressing global issues. Eden also operates a social venture capital fund that invests in social enterprises aligned with its financial, environmental, governance, and social impact criteria, and helps them grow. Eden assists multinational clients develop responsible value chains by conducting ethical audits, building alliances, and setting industry standards and best practices.

November 19, 2014 – EmTech is the annual global Emerging Technologies conference hosted by MIT Technology Review, the oldest and arguably most respected technology publication. This event has grown into a global community which runs in the US, Spain, China, India, Mexico, Colombia and Singapore, and is widely considered as one of the most important conferences on emerging technologies that matter.

This year, EmTech Singapore will be taking place from 27 to 28 January 2015, and will feature world-class speakers from organizations such as Atlassian, Baidu, Intel Capital, Intellectual Ventures, MIT, and Virgin Galactic.

EmTech is collaborating with Eden Strategy Institute to identify 10 of the most outstanding and aspiring innovators under the age of 35 in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, whose superb technical work promises to change the world. The prestigious Innovators Under 35 competition has previously honored some of the world’s most brilliant minds such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, JB Straubel of Tesla, Silicon Valley veteran investor Marc Andreessen, and Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov.

Eden’s Partner Mr. Calvin Chu Yee Ming, invited to serve as a judge of the Innovators Under 35 Singapore, was extremely pleased with the caliber of the candidates this year.

“The breadth of the fields that the innovators worked in was incredible. Many have demonstrated a clear sense of curiosity, tenacity, and inventiveness, but I was encouraged by how many researchers regularly go out of their way to help their peers. I am especially impressed by the prolific track record of high impact research that crosses multiple disciplines, and the wide range of applications that will come out of this year’s winners. This is a clear testament to the notion that world-class innovation can come out of Southeast-Asia,” he said.

To offer a primer into some of the emerging technologies, Eden is releasing a series of infographics revolving around EmTech’s key themes:

EmTech Singapore is a community, a network, and a meeting place for over 500 business leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and change makers based in APAC who are passionate about turning ideas into solutions and addressing major global issues. It is an opportunity to glimpse the future and begin to understand the technologies that matter and how they will change the face of business and drive the new global economy. It is where technology, business, and culture converge. It is the showcase for emerging technologies with the greatest potential to change our lives. It is an access point to the most innovative people and companies in the world.

The Customer Service Index of Singapore reports that Singapore has been steadily improving on its levels of customer service in recent years. Agencies like SPRING Singapore and WDA, for instance, have introduced numerous accreditations, awards, public campaigns, and training programmes that seek to improve on the level of service excellence. Read more here.

March 23, 2014 – Calvin Chu, partner at Eden Strategy Institute has been chosen as one of NetImpact Singapore’s 2014 Changemakers. Calvin has advised corporations such as Cummins, General Electric, and Kronos as well as multilateral organizations such as UNDP and UNESCO in his capacity at Eden.Read more here

About NetImpact

NetImpact Singapore (NISG) Professional Chapter was officially on in 2012 as a community and resource for young professionals seeking impactful and meaningful careers. NISG is dedicated to uniting change makers, students and professionals to explore social impact careers. We provide networking events, speaker series, coffee chats, and articles to help aspiring change agents create positive impacts within their companies and communities.

This is the first of several Eden initiatives to contribute to the understanding of the unique needs and behavior of the region’s EMC consumers. It is the first survey of its kind that reveals their earning, saving, and spending behavior; their hopes, fears, possessions, material attachments, and aspirations.

Eden is subsequently convening a series of in-depth market immersion and joint innovation labs to facilitate bring best-of-breed partnerships to develop and fulfill the promise of Asia’s Emerging Middle Class, and is extending an open invitation for expressions of interests from multinational companies.

The Wall Street Journal weighs in on the interesting highlights from the survey.

About Eden Strategy Institute
Eden Strategy Institute is Asia’s leader in Social Innovation. Its distinctive approach to sustainable advantage helps leading global corporations, governments, and non-profit organizations design new growth platforms, operations, products, and services, and align them with market forces and developmental opportunities. Eden has helped bring disruptive innovations that generate financial value from creating social impact, such as in the areas of public service transformation, healthcare, education, shared value business models, and opportunities for the emerging middle class.